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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Hi Nashville and Tennessee friends! This Saturday, I'll be at the Putnam County Library for the PCL Comics Expo, part of the week long Cookeville Comic Arts Festival. Last year, Joseph interviewed the founder, Matt Knieling, at Handmade and Bound, and I'm delighted to be able to join them this year!

We'll be in the Downstairs Meeting Room of the Cookeville public library, and you can find out more information through the Facebook Event.

Need help finding the Cookeville Public Library? Check here for directions!

Vigilante comic artist, illustrator, and comic craft blogger at www.nattosoup.blogspot.com. I have an MFA from SCAD in Sequential Art, which means I'm highly educated in the art of drawing funny picture books. I specialize in comics aimed at young girls, and enjoy the finer things in life- seinen manga, whiney autobio graphic novels, and science fiction.

Fountain pens behave very differently from dip pens, but can serve as a portable option for looks reminiscent of dip pens. They range from under $3 (Platinum Preppy, Pilot Petit 1, Jetpens Chibi) to over $100, although the pens that are of most interest to artists, sketchers, and inkers are mostly under $50.

Once you've become familiar with fountain pens, and have found a couple that suit your needs, you'll find they're a versatile addition to your inking arsenal, and a fun hobby in its own right.

There's a huge variety of fountain pens available, but you don't need to spend a lot of money to get a great pen for inking.

Nib:
Tip: Although some nibs are pointed, most have a small ball or blunted edge at the tip of the nib, referred to as the Tip. The material used to coat this is a Tipping Material.
Ink Channel:
Tine: Most nibs have a slit that allows for ink to flow and sometimes for the nib to flex. The metal surrounding this slit are the tines.
Shoulder: The shoulders of the nib
Breather Hole
Feed Channel

Barrel
Section/Collar
Threads
O Ring

Converter
Cartridge
Eye Dropper Conversion
Piston

Cap
Clip

For success with fountain pens, you need a trifecta- The Right Pen, The Right Ink, The Right Paper

For artists, the right pen is often not the grail pen of fountain pen enthusiasts. Artists are often interested in

Steady inkflow

Interesting markmaking

Flexible Lineweight

Affordability

Easy maintanence

Fortunately all of the pens covered in today's post hit multiple points on that list.

Inking with Fountain Pens: Pen Overview

About Nibs:

Unlike with dip pens, fountain pen nibs are not mix and match. While you can replace nibs, it's often with another nib from the same maker, and swapping nibs between brands is fairly uncommon.

If you're looking for a truly flexible nib, you're going to have to go vintage. The closest you'll find on the current market are semi-flex nibs, or a fountain pen modified to take a dip pen nib. Although you can pay big bucks for a Namiki Falcon (the enthusiasts swear by it), I think the Noodler's pens are a better fit for most artists. If you're looking to spend a little more, Platinum's Cool is a great soft nib that has a little flex to it as well.

Ok, so maybe these semiflex pens just don't offer enough flex for you. And vintage is so daunting- you don't know what you're looking at, looking for, or how to fix a broken vintage pen. Fear not! You can convert an inexpensive fountain pen, such as the Jinhao x750 to hold a G nib

Jinhao x750 Mod:

Preparing Your New Pen for First Use:

Materials:
Cup clean water
Dishsoap
Your Pen
Paper Towels

Optional:
Converter
Pen Flush (I use Goulet's)

Add a couple drops of dish detergent to your cup of clean water. Fill your pen (if it's a converter or piston type, draw the clean water through the nib+feed+filling mechanism) and expel the water multiple times. Fill pen, allow water to sit in barrel to dissolve factory grease and solvents. Dump water, refill with clean water (no detergent) and rinse pen multiple times.

You may opt to also soak the cap and barrel. This is particularly recommended for eyedropper conversions.

Dry the pen thoroughly before first fill with ink- I usually let it airdry overnight, and may use a syringe to blast air through the feed to help push water out, depending on the fountain pen.

Organics Gregor Mendal inked with a Pilot Preppy

The Right Ink

You should NEVER used a shellac or acrylic based ink in your fountain pens, unless you want to ruin that pen. Ideally, you would only use inks formulated for fountain pens, such as the inks listed below. If you absolutely must use another kind of ink, do yourself a favor and use it in a pen you can part with- a Platinum Preppy is ideal for this purpose.

When exploring inks, go for ink samples before buying a bottle. Goulet Pens and Anderson Pens carry ink samples that allow you to explore an ink, and an ink's properties, before committing.

Irongall inks aren't entirely waterproof. Iron Gall inks are made up of two inks- the iron gall, which turns black over time, but is initially clear or very light, and the dye, which allows us to see the iron gall, and may influence the end color. Iron gall inks darken over time with exposure to oxygen.

Dye Based Inks:

Only a few dye based inks are truly waterproof. I've been working my way through various inks, testing waterfastness, and have shared the results on my Channel and on Once Upon a Tine.

When it comes to fountain pen success, not all papers are made equally. There are papers designed especially for use with fountain pens, but those papers aren't necessarily the ones that appeal or are useful to artists. And many papers that artists prefer do not work well with fountain pens.

Basically, smooth, coated papers tend to do well with fountain pens, but may take awhile to dry.

Common Favorites in the Fountain Pen Community
Tomoe River Paper
Rhodia Paper

Pen Care and Cleaning

Ink can evaporate out of your pen's barrel, so if you aren't going to use a pen for a long period of time, you should clean your pen thorougly. You can use the same methods used for preparing a pen for first use, or you can use a pen flush. I've found that Goulet's Pen flush is ideal- the bottle allows me to dose out small amounts, the complimentary sample vial allows me to soak nibs in a minimal amount of pen flush, and I can store used pen flush for reuse.

Although you can use rubbing alcohol to clean dip pen nibs, do NOT use it to clean your fountain pens- rubbing alcohol can ruin your pens, especially resin pens.

Vigilante comic artist, illustrator, and comic craft blogger at www.nattosoup.blogspot.com. I have an MFA from SCAD in Sequential Art, which means I'm highly educated in the art of drawing funny picture books. I specialize in comics aimed at young girls, and enjoy the finer things in life- seinen manga, whiney autobio graphic novels, and science fiction.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Inking with a nib might seem intimidating, but it only takes a little practice to get a hang for the basics. Nib inking is commonly referred to as dip pen inking, and is seeing a resurgence in popularity, especially among letterers. There's a great deal of appeal for comic artists as well, and dip pens are still very popular in Japan, although not quite as popular here in the West.Inking with a dip pen or nib pen takes a great deal of patience, but offers more control than brush inking. Nibs can be quite affordable, but are commonly sold in sets- often with nibs you won't need. I recommend you find a store that offers nibs open stock, such as Paper and Ink Arts- this will allow you to sample a variety of nibs without purchasing sets. Robust Inking Toolkit Guide for Professional ArtistsInking with a nib is very much about personal preference. First off, you may not enjoy it at all, preferring brushes, brush pens, or technical pens to nibs. Secondly, you might enjoy the act of inking with a nib, but hate the maintenance that nibs require. Thirdly, you may discover that you prefer some nibs to others, so I recommend you experiment widely. Even amongst nib types, there are certain brands that work better than others.

Main Categories of Nibs

PosterOrnamental-Generally refers to monoline/fixed width nibs such as A, B, C, and DTerms You May Hear:Pointed PenIn this post, Pointed Pen nibs have been referred to mainly as 'flexible' nibs. Pointed refers to the tip of the nib, which often comes for a point and takes advantage of twin tines flexing to release ink. These nibs were originally designed for correspondence and calligraphy. Originally used for copperplate.MonolineIn this post, Monoline has been referred to as Fixed Width. These are nibs that only make one lineweight- A, B, C, D and tape nibs fall into this category. These nibs are not designed to flex, and additional pressure may ruin the nib.DrawingAlthough artists will use pointed pen nibs and monoline nibs for art, originally, artists used drawing nibs. These nibs were originally designed for drawing and sketching and are capable of very fine lines.Mapping/CrowquillMapping nibs were originally designed for cartography. These nibs have very fine points and are similar to crowquill nibs.MusicMusic nibs come in two varieties- a three tined nib suitable for drawing the staff, and 5 pronged nibs for drawing the signature.ScrollScroll nibs feature two points, and are used for decorative scrollwork or special effects.Popular Brands:TachikawaDeleterKuretake ZebraBrauseHiroCommon Brands:HuntSpeedballManuscriptLeonardtMy Favorite Nibs:Tachikawa G NibBrause RoseKuretake SajiTachikawa TankBrause StenoFor a wonderful introduction to inking with nibs, please check out this post- Inking Basics- Nibs!

Walnut ink is an ink made from the green husk surrounding the nut of walnuts. The Black Walnut Juglans nigra is usually used. The ink may be liquid or made of crystals that are mixed with water before use. It can be used to produce stains and darken paper to make it look older.

Vigilante comic artist, illustrator, and comic craft blogger at www.nattosoup.blogspot.com. I have an MFA from SCAD in Sequential Art, which means I'm highly educated in the art of drawing funny picture books. I specialize in comics aimed at young girls, and enjoy the finer things in life- seinen manga, whiney autobio graphic novels, and science fiction.

But to be brief, screentones are patterns are basically dot patterns meant to provide textures, values, or other things. They’re not limited to manga or OEL stuff, but that’s where one will find them nowadays.

First things first -- YES, I am working in Clip Studio Paint. While I’ll be referring to specific tools in this application, the general process can be applied basically anywhere you have digital tones available. (Traditional toning? Little bit of a different beast, and I cleared out my traditional tones in 2015.)

First things first, when you do your lineart, try and make sure your linework is generally closed,as if you’re going to begin flatting. This was about as good as I was going to get for the time being.

Basic Fills

So, you know how in Loom’s tutorials, “value” is mentioned? It comes into play here.

Think of screentoning as being like coloring in greyscale; you know where your darks and your lights should be.

In this case, I know one character’s hair is near-black, so I’m just going to go ahead and imply that with some black fills, with highlight areas erased.

In this case, I chose 60L/40% as my screentone of choice, which translates to something like 60 lines per inch at 40% value. The 60 line choice is pretty much my own preference, but 40% is fairly dark, fitting my purposes.

Now that we’ve got the darkest area of the image done, let’s move on to something else.

This time, I selected the entire area of the shirt, which would be kind of… a light brown or grey. So a much lighter tone is needed. This time, I went with something with a lower line count (50L) because 60L would produce something that looks slightly more saturated.

Next up, the bow! What color would you expect it to be? Usually I use fairly saturated (but not necessarily bright) red for this character.

I decided to re-use the 60L/40% tone -- though without any spot blacks, it looks much lighter in comparison to the hair I previously used it on.

You can repeat this sort of process through your illustration to see what all you can create.

Dots vs Noise

It’s important to note that even if you have two types of tones with the same saturation, the TYPE of tone will make a difference in its appearance. For example, here we have a “dot” tone and a “noise” tone.

These produce different types of textures, and are worth playing with! They also will resize differently as well.

Gradiation

Workspace aside -- many applications offer gradiated screentones! Usually they come in two types of gradients -- Radial and Linear.

These are especially good for… Well, expressing gradients. Dark to light, burnt to not-burnt, and so on.

In this case, I used a circular gradient as a fill for the pie crust, as it seemed most fitting.

There are also cases where you can use Gradients for shading -- as seen here:

Tone Erasing

Now that we have some areas laid out with screentone, one might realize… Well, I want to erase things, but I want it to be soft-shaded -- how do I accomplish that?

Back in the day, you’d grab a rough eraser, or use an knife to scrape your tones.

Digitally, there’s a myriad of ways to do this, and it will vary based on your program.

I made a Tone Erase brush in Clip Studio Paint, or you could use use the existing Tone Scraping airbrush (which puts down tone). If you use either of these in conjunction with layer masks, you can accomplish some pretty neat things.

Yes, sometime in-between the gradient and the erasing, I added another flat tone.

In Photoshop, you can make your own tone eraser by using the Pencil tool and using white over your screentone, or by setting your eraser mode to Pencil. Once you do this, open up your Brush window (F5), and play with the settings pictured below. Your preferences may vary, so you should experiment!

Finishing touches

And finally, now that we have the tone laid out, we can start doing things like adding shading and such. When laying down my tone, I’m going to use the tone eraser to accomplish a more soft-shaded look.

For this, I chose 75L/5% instead of another 60L tone.

This allows me to exploit moire when layering it on top of another toned area.

In the process of toning, I also repeated the process on the bow and in various other places to help add depth. This typically isn’t necessary, but can help!

Afterward, I added some tone to the background, as well as text, to produce the finished image!

If you’re like me, and can’t get enough screentone, you can find a myriad of resources on Clip Studio Paint’s assets website. If you search their official account, you can find some awesome goodies!

Wanna see more of my screentone nonsense? Check me out on deviantArt, or read my manga-styled webcomic, Linked!

Vigilante comic artist, illustrator, and comic craft blogger at www.nattosoup.blogspot.com. I have an MFA from SCAD in Sequential Art, which means I'm highly educated in the art of drawing funny picture books. I specialize in comics aimed at young girls, and enjoy the finer things in life- seinen manga, whiney autobio graphic novels, and science fiction.

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